1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to printers capable of continuously processing a plurality of pages and, in particular, relates to a printer capable of, when ejecting a sheet for a preceding page and simultaneously feeding another sheet for a succeeding page, appropriately dealing with the sheet for the succeeding page.
2. Related Art
When receiving print data from a host computer, serving as a print-request transmission source, a general printing apparatus, such as an ink jet printer, performs a process of feeding a sheet of paper as a printing medium (paper feed), allowing a printing mechanism to perform printing on the sheet, and ejecting the printed sheet (paper ejection). In a case of a print request for printing a plurality of pages, the apparatus repeatedly executes the above-described process for each page. In other words, after a sheet serving as a preceding page is ejected, another sheet serving as a succeeding page is fed.
JP-A-11-232065 discloses a technique for paper feed/ejection control. According to the technique, a sheet for a preceding page is ejected simultaneously with feeding of another sheet for a succeeding page in order to increase processing speed. Specifically, according to this related art, when data based on a print request is developed into actual image data in a print control apparatus realized by a host computer, page information indicating the presence of a succeeding page is added to a preamble portion of the actual image data and the resultant image data is transmitted to a printing apparatus so that the printing apparatus ejects a sheet as the preceding page simultaneously with feeding of another sheet as the succeeding page.